Another rainy and cool day in Florida. Sometimes in the winter we don't have rain for weeks and this is the second good rainfall in one week. When going thru my pictures I noticed that I did not include the quilt that Kate or Mona made from the 2 purple and gold blocks. They did a marvelous job and made a great little wallhanging out of the 2 blocks. Kate did say she thought it was a woman from Oklahoma who bought it but couldn't remember her name. I will post it now. You will love the background fabric they used.

Also I am posting a pic of an applique block that I did for a charity auction that Elly Sienkiewicz did back in 03-04 sometime. I had taken a 3 day class with Ellie here in Florida. It was at a hotel down in the Keys and my hubbie came along and spent his time fishing, exploring, etc. while I sewed.

If you ever get a chance to take one of Ellie's classes or go to her retreat in Williamsburg, VA I encourage you to do so. She is a wonderful, warm person and very unassuming. I would say she is probably the top applique person in this country at least. There is a funny little story that goes with this trip. We were in class one day and I was sitting up at the front and one of the gals had gone for coffee. She comes back in with 2 men and one was Ron Howard who was Opie on the Andy Griffith show and now a world famous director. They had met on the elevator and he wanted to know what type of class she was taking. She told him and he wanted to come see what we were doing. Everyone but Ellie knew who he was. I grabbed my camera and asked if I could take a pic of him and Ellie. He said sure so I snapped one even though she wondered what all the fuss was about. This was not a digital camera but the regular old camera. I told Ellie I would send her a copy of the pic and she wrote me back with a delightful note telling me her family thought she was crazy that she did not know him. I guess when you travel and teach as much as she does you don't watch much tv. We got quite a chuckle out of it. If I can find the pic somewhere I will scan it and put it on. My guess is the pics are back in Chicago. I think they were there scouting out places but had stayed at our Hyatt. Aparently his wife was with him also but did not meet her. To get back to the charity quilt they received so many blocks from people they were able to make 3 quilts and they were auctioned on ebay. This was my first foray into applique and my block was not that great but the quilt it was put on sold for over $6,000.00. We were given the background fabric so they were all the same. There were some gorgeous blocks on there plus Ellie's name certainly helped the deal. Maybe we should have let Ron Howard know it was going to be auctioned off and got some of those Hollywood dollars. I did not have my own laptop in those days so don't know if I have any pictures of it or not. Will have to look on my hubbie's computer.

The project I did in her class I finished but it is rolled up in a drawer and I think I will have it framed this summer. Maybe some day one of the grandkids might want it. I will show it when framed. I put a lot of time into it so should frame it.